Ode to Tea

Steaming comfort, wafting cheer,
Cozy for unhappy hands,
Fair reminder of repose,
Token of exotic lands:

Morning Thunder motivates,
Fortifies, infusing tact,
Raspberry Gardens beautifies
Constant, stern, quotidian fact;

Cinnamon Apple, Bengal Spice,
Peppermint and Lemon Zing,
Blueberry and Country Peach--
A cup of tea is a wondrous thing.

Composed by me for The Beehive's Poetry Ceilidh I

Tea in a Saucepan

Today was Cornflower's birthday (see previous post, I'm too lazy to link tonight) and she woke up with a fever, cough and headache. Poor Cornflower. She slept most of the morning.

The rest of us did schoolwork in the morning and scrubbed acrylic paint off the sidewalk in the afternoon. Don't ask.

It doesn't sound like it would be a Keeping Day, does it? But it was.

After dinner tonight, Cornflower and I read the first three chapters of Half-Magic by Edward Eager. As my voice got tired, I realized that I wanted a sweet something. My brilliant mind putting two and two together, I remembered that we had pre-shaped cookie dough in the freezer. Bake and eat!

I suggested we adjourn to the kitchen. Cornflower's sisters quickly figured out what we were about, and before you could say Jack Robinson, the teacups were out and the water in the kettle.

Mariel got the OED and beguiled us into a game of Dictionary.

Cornflower sat down to the piano with her faithful pink frog, and announced that Kermit wanted to perform for us. He accomplished this by propping himself against Cornflower's lap, playing Into the West (from LOTR), Turkey in the Straw and Ode to Joy, and then, for a finale, sat on the couch and played one song by telepathy. (Please pay no attention to the slightly feverish child at the piano.)

While the cookies baked, I steeped the tea in a saucepan. I was not inclined to get out the china teapot (hand-wash only, and I had already reclaimed two sinkloads of dirty dishes) but my dishwasher-safe pitchers were out of commission-- one, made of glass, was cold from being in the fridge, while my plastic pitcher was not yet recovered from being used in the chalk-and-acrylic-paint art/experiment of the day before.

(In case you are wondering, steel wool and water will eventually remove glow-in-the-dark acrylic paint from concrete.)

We ate chocolatey chocolate cookies and drank peppermint tea (ladled out of the saucepan with my crockpot ladle) and tried to stump one another with words such as obreptitious and opsimathy and palliate. We laughed because Aravis is obreptitious and I am a kind of opsimath. And if we had been in charge of word meanings, we would have decided that palliating was the art of painting horses.

Today was a gem. We had illness and tears and leftover mess and a math lesson that took way too long-- and yet, today was Grand. It goes in the vault as a Keeping Day.

9

musical



cuddly



goofy



adventurous



Happy 9th birthday, My Cornflower! Love you, sweetie.

Get wisdom, get understanding: forget it not;
neither decline from the words of my mouth.
Forsake her not, and she shall preserve thee:
love her, and she shall keep thee.
Proverbs 4:5-6

Novel Philosophy

What we do not perceive is, that philosophy as found written in books of philosophy to-day has become more or less academic; she no longer "cries at the gates, at the entry of the city, at the coming in at the doors, Unto you, O men, I call; and my voice is to the sons of men."

She has become an affair of the Schools. Men meet with her there, not to their souls' profit so much as for the joy of intellectual gymnastic.

But philosophy keeps to herself still two or three resorts from which we may hear her voice, 'Unto you, O men, I call.' The poets entertain her; through them she still calls to men; but her message is often implicit, and only the attentive ear may hear. Those who do hearken at the coming in of this door get oracles of price, luminous words for the interpretation of their days.

In the novel, however, she is explicit, takes up every one of the functions which we have seen Plutarch assign her; unfolds ourselves to us as poor things, most likely, and flashes a search-light upon our innocent little ways, our much-to-be-condoned moods. Also, as philosophy is for our instruction in life, and as our chief business is the bringing up of the generation to follow, the great novelists offer us a key to the vexed problem of education.

from "Young Crossjay" by Charlotte Mason (Volume 5)

Calling

"If much hangs and turns upon the choice of the work we are to do and the field where we are to do it, it must not be forgotten how much also depends on the time when it is undertaken, the way in which it is performed, and the associates in the labour. In all these matters the true workman will wait for the Master's beck, glance, or signal before a step is taken."

from George Mueller of Bristol by A.T. Pierson

Costumes

I'm sorry about the quality of the pictures. I was fighting with the camera-- it just wouldn't behave.

Scarlett



Pirate



Galadriel

A Complaint by William Wordsworth

There is a change––and I am poor;
Your love hath been, nor long ago,
A fountain at my fond heart's door,
Whose only business was to flow;
And flow it did; not taking heed
Of its own bounty, or my need.

What happy moments did I count!
Blest was I then, all bliss above!
Now, for this consecrated fount
Of murmuring, sparkling, living love,
What have I––shall I dare to tell?
A comfortless and hidden well.

A well of love––it may be deep;
I trust it is––and never dry;
What matter? if the waters sleep
In silence and obscurity.
Such change, and at the very door
Of my fond heart, hath made me poor.

And Yet Shew I Unto You a More Excellent Way

Though I speak
With the tongues of men and of angels,
And have not charity,
I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.

And though I have the gift of prophecy,
And understand all mysteries, and all knowledge,
And have not charity,
I am nothing.

And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor,
And though I give my body to be burned,
And have not charity,
It profiteth me nothing.

Charity suffereth long, and is kind;

Charity envieth not;

Charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up,

Doth not behave itself unseemly,
Seeketh not her own,
Is not easily provoked,
Thinketh no evil;

Rejoiceth not in iniquity,
But rejoiceth in the truth;

Beareth all things,
Believeth all things,
Hopeth all things,
Endureth all things.

Charity never faileth:

But whether there be prophecies, they shall fail;
Whether there be tongues, they shall cease;
Whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away.

For we know in part, and we prophecy in part.

But when that which is perfect is come,
Then that which is in part shall be done away.

When I was a child,
I spake as a child,
I understood as a child,
I thought as a child:
But when I became a man,
I put away childish things.

For now we see through a glass darkly;
But then face to face:

Now I know in part; but then shall I know
Even as I am known.

And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three;
But the greatest of these is Charity.

I Corinthians 13